by SepiaTones

Created on: February 09, 2009   Last Updated: February 20, 2009

It's an irksome paradox. That the same solace I once yearned for is now choking me with emptiness.

I have always treasured aloneness. Solace is a precious gift and, to have it, I have rejected invitations, left events for others to enjoy, and generally excluded myself from the masses. I wanted only the company of my own thoughts. Now I feel out of sorts in my own home, wandering from room to room, cleaning a little, or reorganizing my clutter. Reading once fulfilled me, even ravaged my weekends. Now my lack of focus makes it difficult to comprehend a sentence, let alone a paragraph.

I seek to mindlessly escape these feelings by experiencing vicariously through the plastic people of cable TV. Flip up. Flip down, and cycle through again. I retread the path to the kitchen and open the same dirty cabinet doors which contain nothing remotely interesting to my numbed palette. They may as well be empty like me.

I find no pleasure in the things that once interested me. Now I have lowered the standard. In pleasure's place I'll take a sense of humanness, but am sure I can't even find the energy to replace my former pleasures with a lesser substitute. It doesn't matter anyway.

It's Monday now and I drive to work wondering where the value lies in working every day. I am surrounded by colleagues but feel alone here too.

I live in a world with people whose values I do not share. What I am doing here? And why do I feel as though they have more of a right to be here than I? Walking through the hallways, I step passively aside while people without common etiquette walk by me unhindered. I have an acute understand of what this symbolizes.

I have moved away from everything that has represented comfort for the past four decades. Why is it that being alone in a familiar place seemed less like loneliness?

I now enjoy minority status. Because I cannot speak English my thirty years of administrative experience has virtually no value. Wait, though. Isn't this America? Something is very wrong here.

I need to talk to somebody. I wonder to myself if there is anyone out there who cares that I feel very alone today. Somehow knowing I am not the only lonely person out there is not easing my isolation. Have I unwittingly made myself a victim of my own desires?

I am living the human condition. I am like Solomon. Everything seems like futility to me. Loneliness is no new condition. It is the sad song of the ages. There is nothing of earth that can satisfy the longing human soul. All is vanity. The best we can hope for is to occupy our time with occasional activities that bring us some level of meaning and fulfillment.

What my lonely soul desires most is to be in connection with its Creator. I pray He gives me the strength to occupy myself with the knowledge of His goodness until He comes. Let me not take my time and my heightened awareness for granted. May I, meanwhile, take my loneliness and occasional emptiness and find a way to connect with someone here who has experienced the same. I surrender it now giving up even my loneliness God, to you. I know that you know.

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